Header$type=social_icons

DIY Jeans and Dress Pants Upcycle: Part IV

Part IV: Purse This post was beautiful and complete, but somehow I managed to delete it. So here we go again.... This purse could techni...

Part IV: Purse

This post was beautiful and complete, but somehow I managed to delete it. So here we go again....

This purse could technically be reversible, but I added snaps to the top of mine so it's a bit awkward if you try to reverse it on mine. I ended up using the dress pants side with the jean pocket as my purse and added snaps accordingly. I think the jean pocket was a way better pocket than the dress pant pocket... which was more suited to being inside the purse.

Cut four pieces of fabric that are the same size.
Two from the jeans, two from the dress pants.

On the jeans side, I want to add a dress pant pocket. I folded over the long
top edge twice and straight stitched across.

Finished top edge.

I folded over the other three edges and stitched them down
with a straight stitch to one piece of the jean fabric.

Here's my fabric laid out with the pocket added to the jeans.

To make a pocket for the dress pants side, I seam ripped a
pocket off the remainder of the jeans.

All done, pretty!

Haha, guess we wear out our jeans pretty well.
These used to be nice dark blue?

I laid the pocket over one piece of the dress pant fabric
and sewed the three sides in place.

Pinned the jeans fabric right sides together and the
same with the dress pants.

Straight stitch around the sides and bottoms of the fabric.

Snip the excess fabric off, and the corners. Don't snip the stitching.

Now for the strap of the purse- I decided to use the belt loops/top of the pants. I cut it off,
making sure to seam rip the bottoms of the loops so I could keep those with the strap.

See this... you need to seam rip to get the extra fabric that you cut out.

After seam ripping it all, I pulled the extra piece of fabric out.

I stitched around the whole bottom of the strap OVER the
belt loops and over the area with the button too.
I took the zipper off first.

Snipped off the ends of the belt loops that hung over.

Zig Zagged the ends... not easy to see in this picture. I just
wanted to ensure that they don't fray.

I cut the strap in half... keep in mind what parts of the strap you want
where when you cut. I tried to keep the button off center from the top of my shoulder
because I thought it'd be cuter on the side.

You should insert one bag into the other- the inside bag needs to be facing RIGHT SIDES out (or right sides together with the outer bag. You will insert your strap between those two right sides with the raw edges of the strap sticking up from the bags. You can snip off the excess after. Figure out exactly where you want the straps to be so they're even.

Go around the top and straight stitch with a 1/4" seam allowance, leaving
a small hole to turn and topstitch. I backstitched over the straps once or twice.

Cut off the extra strap peeking off from the top.

Turn your purse right sides out through the hole. Tuck the inside of the purse into the outside.

Should look like this.

Still have a hole to sew closed! Fold the edges over and
straight stitch around the whole purse.

Done! Yeah I probably should've picked better matching thread
(as to better hide my less than straight straight stitch), but I wanted to use more of my heavy thread for this project.

Final Product

I hope you enjoyed these four upcycle blogs! Thanks for reading! Let me know if you have any questions and I'd love to see your creations as well!